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Post 1858: a day from 7734…

Such a day! I’ll spare you full details because my blood pressure already is maxed out, but it started with my Internet provider having some sort of catastrophic technical issues that wiped out the Internet in my area. You didn’t get my blog post at 2:00 AM, right? I’d already spent two-and-a-half hours trying to get the Internet, then calling the technical support to converse obscenely and with as many blasphemies as I could squeeze into a sentence while waiting for the automated technical support voice to shut up and give me a human.

After I returned home from dialysis, the chirpy automated voice told me the terrible outage was over and my Internet was now restored! Except it wasn’t. After another round of unpleasant automated conversation with me shouting loudly “Just give me a &%#!@ real human being, you stupid automated ^%#@& cow!” into the phone, I finally got a human being, who, I’m sure, realized I was pretty unhappy by the time she answered.

“Yeah,” asked Dougy, “What else could go wrong?”

After lots of disconnecting this, waiting for lights on that, all of which I’d done several times already – I know the stupid routine – she established my router was toast, that I had to go down to the nearest of their offices and get the router replaced.

That done – and with several side adventures till things worked – I finally, at 1 PM, had Internet and could finish today’s post. I mean, what else could go wrong, aside from the vomit by the guest bedroom door that I think was Dougy’s contribution to my day?

Here’s what else could go wrong. I meant to take a photo and rotate it as necessary, but managed to get a GIF sequence instead. GIFs don’t rotate when you edit, just one photo out of the sequence of eight does. That’s what’s at the top of this post. The uneditable GIF, though, is a bit mesmerizing….

P.S. This post will serve as today’s and tomorrow’s post. I need a break from the computer.

Once the options given show no resemblance to the problem I have, I start getting “disturbed” and just want to get to the place where they hook me up with a human. The next problem (which I wasted several minutes dealing with till I accidentally resolved it) was re-establishing a new network place for my printer. Once I finally got it to respond to print orders from my laptop, I had one of those “What happened?” moments where I got what I wanted, but couldn’t duplicate the steps if my life depended on it: I learned nothing I can use next time (and there will be one, eh!?) to restore the WiFi link.

I’m so thankful that we have the absolute best internet provider, and, if you can believe it, is part of the city-owned electric company. We used to have Comcast which is the devil incarnate.May your internet trouble be over for a good while and your blood pressure return to normal.

It’s done for now. I look back at the frequency of interruptions this past year, and I believe the ones that weren’t related to those because of work on system problems were related to a router on its last days. I’ve now had router and modem problems that were fixed with new ones, so I’m beginning to know what to look for when they start to go bad. Knowledge is power!

Yeah! He (and Andy) are looking really sweet these days. Their haircuts have grown out enough to bring out their prettiest coat qualities. Dougy’s ruff, in real life, is spectacular. Photos don’t do it justice.

Oh no… I hope your week will improve. Sadly I’m having a high blood pressure day too. Our kitties favourite toys (which I also happen to need for an event this weekend…) and are currently in three separate depots none of which is actually anywhere near us! Seems to be one of those weeks. 🤣

Green has to do, or blue on one gizmo. No red dots here, though both kitty boys don’t react to them. Andy, worse of all, figured out first thing the dot wasn’t the object of interest, but the source of the red dot was! He wanted to sniff and paw the object making the red dots, and he always ignored the red dots. (He always has been the little intellectual kitty!)

My week is much better now that my Internet provider inconvenienced me in the worst episode yet. Sounds like you need a compliant kitty to hug and pet to get that blood pressure back in control! Best wishes for getting those toys organized for your kitties. I know how that can go. No substitutions allowed!

It was still somewhat of a disaster. The delivery finally arrived today. Box one came with a grumpy and rude youngster that thought it would be acceptable to call us names when I quite rightly asked where the other two pieces of the consignment were which apparently wasn’t his problem and if I didn’t take the one box he had he’d just dump it. 🙀

I generally get over bad moods fairly easily, though things like an Internet provider that seems to have lots of downtime during the time of day I have available to work on it puts me in a dark cloud mighty fast!

Yes, he is fine! Though it looks rough, I actually apply only light pressure when “scritching”, and Dougy would (and does!) let me know if he finds my efforts unacceptable. Andy does, too. The day’s looking up finally. Lots of blinking lights, just what I like to see!

Less than a mile, I suppose, and it is main roads all the way. I thing you can probably get to any place in this town of 8900 or so people in five minutes or less. Of course, if you can’t find it in town, you may have to drive an hour to four-and-a-half hours to get it, depending on what it is. Most typically, a bit less than an hour gets you to the next sizable place when you can get just about anything you might want. I do a lot of Amazon shopping….) And thanks! I am relaxing more and more as the time passes.

Yes, my smart phone can communicate with my laptop and PC, and the smart phone also can connect with Facebook, Google, etc. Though it has a fairly decent-sized screen, It still is a challenge to read and work on. I use the laptop most of the time, saving the phone for photo-taking and – horrors! – making phone calls.

The main thing is the Internet provider needs to give me the tools I need to do the job as their good faith way of earning that outrageous fee I pay them each month for their service. Besides, the phone has some issues now, too. I think it’s about to die on me.

When I picked the router up yesterday, the person at the Internet provider’s office tried to talk me into their telephone service, which, at $9.95 an month of unlimited in-country calls (and an extra $10 a month for the same access to international friends) would be a bargain compared with my phone provider…if I wanted to go back to a landline phone again. No way!